Author: superbub97

No jokes, no twist in the tale, this is the true story of the freakiest thing that has ever happened in my life.

In the early-1990’s, I rented a small terraced house for 6 months in the beautiful small town of Haworth in West Yorkshire. I won’t tell you the name of the street because I know what you are about to read, however, here is a picture. I lived about half way up on the right-hand side.

When I first moved in, the landlady gave me a little tour of the old house. It was very small with a tiny entrance behind the front door and a living-room with a micro-cooking area at the back. There was a double bedroom on the first floor and another smaller spare bedroom in the attic. From the kitchen area, there was a door leading to stone steps down to a dark, musty cellar. It stored some old brooms, some essential tools and spider-web covered wine bottles. It was the first of only two occasions I ever went down there.

Every house has its own sounds, and I eventually became used to what was normal. As the months went by, I became increasingly aware of other strange sounds. Floorboards would creak in the middle of the night, the door leading to the attic would slam at unexpected times and every time I checked, it was closed solid. I would occasionally feel a temporary breeze flow through my bedroom, and yet all windows and doors would be closed, there were no vents in the walls. These events were more frequent when my 3-year-old son stayed with me. I have no idea why but that was an undeniable fact.

Those who know me will understand there is a logical scientist inside, trying to get out. I have little time for UFO enthusiasts, ghost-hunters and anyone attempting to convince me about religious creation theories. It is for this reason that what I’m about to tell you cannot be dismissed as the ramblings of someone who wants to believe in the unbelievable.

Towards the end of my six-month tenancy, the strange unexplainable happenings had escalated to daily occurrences. I admit I always thought it was an odd house but at no point was I ever worried or scared. My son was not with me on this one particular night. I was awoken at around 4 am with a loud bang in the kitchen right beneath me. I genuinely thought there was a burglar downstairs, so I hurled myself out of bed, out of the bedroom, launched myself down the stairs in the darkness and burst into the living room/kitchen. High on adrenaline, I turned the light on ready for a confrontation, but there was no-one there. I scanned the room, even looked behind the settee in case someone was hiding, but I was on my own.

I checked the front door, the only way into the house – it was locked – then returned to the living room. Somewhat puzzled I walked into the kitchen, and my heart literally skipped a beat; that’s when I noticed the weirdest thing I’ve ever witnessed. On the draining part of the kitchen sink was a wooden chopping board. Slammed into the board was my super-sharp bread knife, recreated in the picture below. It was swaying from side-to-side.

I had not used that knife in the days leading up to that night, nor had I ever kept the wooden chopping board on the sink. I looked to my right and saw that the door to the cellar was ajar by about three inches; it had been shut since the day I moved in.

Now I admit that at this point I was starting to worry. Using more force than I thought I would have to, I extracted the bread knife from the chopping board pushed open the cellar door and turned the light on before descending, holding the knife in front of me. It was only a small area, and all I could see was the broom, the tools and the spider-webbed wine bottles. There was no other way in or out.

I cannot explain the events of that night. I promise you there was no alcohol involved that might have clouded my judgement and there’s absolutely no exaggeration for story-telling effect. A few days later, I handed the keys back to the landlady. Of course, I recounted these events to her but she just smiled in puzzlement and said that she’d never experienced anything like it while living there herself, her previous tenants had never mentioned anything either. She probably thought I was a nutter!

It was September 1980; we had just finished our A-levels and were about to embark on our university education. Along with 4 other friends, I took the opportunity to go camping in the South of France for two weeks. We stayed in a small resort called Sanary-sur-Mer not far from Toulon, more precisely at Portissol Beach. This is what the beach looks like today, but back in 1980 there was a lot less going on, and instead of holiday chalets next to the beach, there was a huge campsite.

On a warm evening during the first week, I joined two of my mates for a few beers in a local bar (or it could have been some very cheap white wine, I can’t quite remember!). We strolled back to the campsite in the moonlight and noticed some French boys messing about with a football on the beach, so we popped down to introduce ourselves and hopefully have a kick-around. It became apparent that it was not an organised event and that they were all basically trying to impress a girl who was watching them while sat up against the wall.

The boys were probably around 16 years old, the girl with them was 18 as I found out later; one of the boys was her younger brother. They viewed us with some trepidation as we approached and they quickly closed ranks. The girl shouted “Hello” to us, so we went to join her. She was called Claudine and was the proud owner of a pair of beautiful big brown eyes, long and curly jet-black hair, and an infectious smile. Although a little on the short side, there was definitely something about her that made us quickly realise why those younger boys were out to impress, but making themselves look like immature idiots in the process.

We were able to have a laugh thanks to a mix of Claudine’s broken English and mutual sign language. If this chance encounter was a race for her affections, then it’s fair to say I was leading the race. The reason was not due to my good looks or my intelligence, of course. One of my mates was much better looking, and the other was far more intelligent. Now I’m definitely not saying that the brainy one was not attractive, nor am I saying that the handsome one was thick as mince, but if you swapped over those traits to create two separate people, they would both be dangerous. No, the reason why I was leading the race was that I was the only one who had a GCE ‘O’ level in French and I could manage simple communication when spoken slowly.

My friends decided to join the French boys in a game of football leaving me to chat to the lovely Claudine. Things were progressing nicely, in fact, she had raised the subject of skinny-dipping, but then things took a seriously bad turn. Two policemen arrived on the beach, and it was evident they weren’t messing about. They spoke no English, and their French was so fast I could not understand what they were saying. Claudine did her best to translate; it transpired that we were breaking the law by being on the beach after dark. The cops didn’t seem too concerned with Claudine and the French boys, they were more focused on the three English holidaymakers.

Claudine said, “let me talk to them”, and she walked about 20 paces away with the two policemen. After chatting to them for two or three minutes, she returned with an explanation. With the two cops leaning against a railing a short distance away, Claudine said that they would allow our French friends to go home if they went straight away, but we were given an ultimatum. If we agreed to meet them at the local bar near the top of the hill the following evening when they were off-duty, then they would not arrest us; if we did not agree, then they would take us down to the local station and charge us.

At this point, we looked across at the ‘gendarmes’ in an entirely different light. What did they look like? Take a look at this picture of the Village People.

Now try to imagine the guy on the right, wearing the uniform of the guy on the left. I hope you now understand the position between a rock and a hard place that we found ourselves in. We obviously didn’t want to get arrested, so we agreed to meet them in the bar the following evening. Claudine went across to tell them, and without a word of a lie, the more senior cop blew a kiss at us. Holy crap! Claudine came over to me, planted a kiss on my cheek and said goodbye. I never saw her again.

Did we go to the bar the following evening? We most certainly did not.

Did we return to the beach on any of the remaining evenings of our holiday? Not on your Nellie!

Looking back at this incident almost 40 years later, I’m now starting to think they may have been joking with us but I would not bet my mortgage on it.

I recently had a ‘light bulb moment’, not about light bulbs, but about toilet paper. [Now there’s a sentence that I’m willing to bet has never been written before!]

Before I explain my idea, it is important to clearly state one major assumption that this blog post relies entirely upon. When toilet paper is used, two sheets are stripped from the roll and folded across the perforations in the centre. This has already ruled out any interest from one of my daughters who, after wondering why my toilet paper expenses were so high, I discovered wiped herself by taking about 12 sheets and wrapping it around her entire fist for fear of having to touch any of her own undesirable matter.

This is a diagram, to scale, of two sheets of toilet paper, the black line down the middle indicating where the perforations are.

When folded evenly, I can tell you that the length is 12.3 cm and the width is 10.2 cm, resulting in a total surface area of 125.46 square cm. It occurred to me that it is not necessary that the whole of that surface area needs to be a double-sheet thickness, but you still need that security of the bulk of the area being thicker. Can you tell I’m desperately trying not to be crude in my descriptions here?

Here is my idea. Instead of creating those perforations perpendicular to the paper edge, why not cut them at an angle? 20 degrees from that perpendicular seems perfect to me, as per the diagram below, again drawn to scale. The cutting process should alternate between a 90-degree perpendicular cut and a 20-degree cut (this is actually 70 degrees from the paper edge).

This is what the shape looks like then the paper is folded using the angled perforations.

The dark blue area is double thickness, and the pale blue sections represent single sheet thickness. If you hold the paper by the folded edge, then the single sheet parts are situated on the outer edges of the “action areas”. I have calculated using the formula for determining the area of a triangle (0.5 x base length x height) that this configuration of the end shape increases the surface area by 39 square centimetres. That’s a whopping 31.09% extra surface area, created by simply cutting perforations at a 20-degree angle!

Now, if you were Mr Andrex and you were presented with this idea, would you:

Market it as a gimmick,

Market it as an innovation that provides over 30% more efficiency,

Cut the volume of paper used per sheet and therefore reduce raw material costs while still providing the same useful surface area?

My daughter, Bethany, told me a story about something good she did at work, but circumstances dictated that she was unable to claim any credit for it. It reminded me of a rugby league story which I’ve since recounted a few times.

I used to play rugby for Sunderland in the mid-1980s. We played a friendly match against Clayton ARLFC in Bradford and afterwards, 5 Sunderland players were asked if we would like to join the Clayton team on a short tour to the South of France to play two matches in Toulouse. We were not really part of the Clayton team but we were welcomed anyway, and made lots of friends. At this point, I could tell you stories of some of the events of that memorable trip, including:

a drunken visit to the Pernod factory,

indescribable mass seasickness on the Portsmouth to St Malo ferry,

the time I fell asleep in a French café/bar and awoke with my right arm completely clean-shaven,

trout fishing,

getting lost in Auterive and having to blag a lift back to our base using translation skills gained from my French language O-level,

an England v France size contest (I’ll leave it to your imagination to determine what was being measured, suffice to say the little French scrum-half won after the English prop-forward quickly admitted defeat before having to remove his trouser belt).

This particular story is about one of the best moments I’ve ever had on a rugby pitch. In a tough game played in blistering heat, the score was 20-20 with less than a minute to play. Our French opponents were in possession, virtually on their own line, but in a final display of Gallic flair they whizzed the ball out to their left-winger who cut through our defence and went flying down the touchline. I was the only Clayton player who made an effort to chase. With every stride I was slowly gaining ground and, after a 90m run, we arrived at our try-line together. He glanced across at me and put in a full scale dramatic dive into the corner to claim the match-winning try. I did the same thing, smashed him in mid-air with every ounce of energy I had left and managed to dislodge the ball and prevent him scoring. The final whistle blew immediately afterwards.

The French winger and I gathered our breaths back – or as the Australians call it, “sucked in the big ones” – we shook hands, helped each other off the ground and joined our teammates at the other end of the pitch in an act of cross-channel, end-of-match camaraderie.

Back in the changing rooms, all the players were buzzing; no one had expected us to even get close to the French team, let alone leave the match with a draw. I’ll never forget the moment that our captain was talking to all the senior players in the team and said “What a fantastic match, but who made that crunching tackle at the end to stop them scoring?” No one said anything; inside my head, my brain was screaming “Tell them, tell them it was you”, but I didn’t. I thought in that moment that I would come across as a needy little nerd in a team of relatively tough rugby players, so I opted to sit there in silence.

There seems to be a growing trend towards leaving the potato peel on the vegetable as part of cooking. Chips/fries can be cooked with the skin left on, and obviously, potato wedges and jacket potatoes retain the outer covering. Potato peelings contain lots of flavour and nutrients, so for those dishes where the peel is not required, why throw away all that goodness?

Thanks to the BBC Good Food magazine, I was inspired by a recent article to produce what I call “Potato Snackage”; it is straightforward to do, gives a wonderfully tasty alternative to the potato crisp and a fantastic accompaniment to a nice bottle of beer (or four).

Ingredients

Potato Peelings

Rapeseed Oil

For the Spice Blend

Paprika

Onion Powder

Tomato Powder

Citric Acid

Cayenne Pepper

Rock Salt

Pinch of Granulated White Sugar

Method

This recipe works best if large potato peelings are used; I guess that small ones would taste just as good but would be fiddly to work with. Wash the strips in cold water and pat dry on some kitchen roll.

2. Prepare the spice blend using all the ingredients and grind with a mortar and pestle. The mix of ingredients listed above is fantastic, but you could use anything you like, really. Even simple salt-and-pepper works well.

3. Spread the peelings over a baking tray trying not to overlap them. I find that an excellent New Zealand pale ale assists in this process.

4. Brush the strips with the rapeseed oil and sprinkle the spice blend over the top. Turn them all over and repeat. A Camden Town lager is the preferred beverage at this point.

5. Bake in the oven for around 20 minutes at a medium/high heat setting until some of the peelings start to bubble, and they crisp up. By the time they come out of the oven, you will be ready for a continental white beer.

6. Serve in a small bowl with a Guinness! Enjoy.

Potato Snackage is so tasty that it is tempting to peel a potato just to obtain the strips of peel and throw away the rest of the vegetable.

In a break from my usual storytelling blogs, I feel I need to share my latest culinary success with the world (OK, maybe not the whole world, maybe just the handful of people who will read this).

A Kung Po is one of my favourite Chinese meals; I have tried to replicate this restaurant-quality dish many times at home without much success… until yesterday! Here is my secret recipe, but before you read it, I make no excuse for not entering actual quantities; if you like something in the list of ingredients, put more of it in, if you don’t, use less. You are unlikely to see measurements and more likely to read words such as ‘dollop’, ‘splodge’, ‘sprinkling’, ‘splash’ and ‘dash’.

Ingredients

pork steaks

green pepper

red pepper

yellow pepper

red onion

red chilli pepper

water chestnuts

cashew nuts

pineapple

For the Sauce

Korean Gochujang Sauce/Paste

pomegranate molasses

scotch bonnet hot pepper sauce

dark soy sauce

Worcestershire sauce

cider vinegar

lemon juice

tomato purée

Chinese five spice

sesame seeds

Method

1.Cut the pork steaks into half inch cubes. Place in a bowl and mix in the Korean paste, the pomegranate molasses to give sweetness and the hot pepper sauce to give heat. Mix everything together and allow to marinate in the fridge for an hour.

2.Chop the peppers, onion and pineapple into roughly the same size as the pork cubes. Finally, thinly slice the chilli pepper. Slice the water chestnuts and add all the ingredients into a separate bowl with the cashew nuts.

3.Add sesame oil to a frying pan or wok, heat it until quite hot and add the pork mixture.

4.From here onwards, there are no delicate instructions. Slap in all the mixed up chopped vegetables and pineapple and continually give it all a good stir round. Add the soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce, a dash of cider vinegar, a squirt of lemon juice, a dollop of tomato purée, and a sprinkling of five spice. Keep stirring until it looks like a proper Kung Po.

5.Serve in a bowl and sprinkle sesame seeds on top. I chose to accompany mine with hot white pitta bread.

I regret not taking a photograph of the final rainbow-coloured result. It tasted as stunning as it looked, even if I say so myself. I almost wanted to cook it again today just to take a photograph, but I resisted the urge.

You need to trust me on this one. In words taken directly from Father Ted, “Go on, go on, go on…”

Everything suggested in part 1 surely seems logical to the impartial observer; I have no doubt that each of those topics has already been discussed within FIFA to varying levels. It is now time to suggest something substantially more radical.

The Scoring System

In addition to removing the offside rule, adopting a sin-bin approach and bringing in video technology, I propose that we completely amend the scoring system. Even those games that are considered to be exciting might still only end up with a handful of goals scored. Why don’t we turn everything that happens into a meaningful event on the scoresheet? Further, why don’t we make those scoring situations more likely to occur?

The best way I can see to achieve more excitement is to increase the size of the goalposts. We can keep the current goals as they are but introduce a larger goal around the outside; the result is an “inner goal” and an “outer goal”. Inner goals are the usual 24ft by 8ft high and outer goals could be 60ft by 14ft.

The object of football is to score goals so, while there will be points awarded for different actions that take place in the game, by far the greatest reward is to score a goal. I have devised a point-scoring system which rewards attacking play, also rewards good defensive play but penalises offenders for foul or negative play.

Here are some notes of the above categories which might not be obvious. A “shot on target” is only awarded if it is saved or blocked, in other words, a goal scored would not additionally count as a shot on target. “Woodwork” effectively means hitting the post and the ball rebounding back into play. A blocked shot is always made by a defender, a save only by the goalkeeper. The “15-second rule” refers to the length of time the ball is in play before it is propelled into the other team’s half of the pitch. “Diving” relates to any kind of activity where a player tries to gain a free kick when they haven’t been sufficiently fouled. “Backchat” refers to any criticism of an official, or a decision they have made, by a player or a manager.

I know what you are thinking. This is ‘pie-in-the-sky’, unprovable logic designed to be controversial. I predicted your thought process and thought I would attempt to demonstrate how it might work. I decided to record the Championship play-off final of 2017 between Huddersfield Town and Reading, the intention being to scrutinise every action that could be considered point-scoring under my new system. I’m under no illusion that this type of experiment is flawed. There were no inner or outer goals on the pitch at the time, and more importantly, the players were not aware of these rules while the match was taking place. Nevertheless, it did allow me to tot up the scores just to give us an idea of how it would pan out.

Over 90 minutes, the match ended in a scoreless draw with – let’s be honest about this – an underwhelming amount of action in either goal area. Although I never considered extra time in my calculations, they couldn’t score a goal in the next 30 minutes either, and a match worth over £180 million to the victors was settled by a missed penalty kick. This is a perfect example of why I’m disillusioned with the sport. Watching a recording of the game while accumulating scores according to a different method actually made things a lot more interesting for me, and I can only assume that the same would apply to spectators because there was something significant happening right throughout the game. Here is a picture of my rough scoring sheet; blue ink denotes the first half, red denotes the second:

I then built a spreadsheet to calculate the result based on the points per action mentioned earlier. You will see that although Huddersfield Town were promoted on penalties, they lost this match 196 – 190.

Out of every statistic in the above spreadsheet, the thing that astounded me most was the extent of the thing that annoys me the most. Reading passed the ball back to a teammate in his own half from a position in the opposing half a total of 36 times; that is more often than once every two minutes of actual playing time.

So, who wants to appoint me on to the board of directors of FIFA? I feel a petition coming on.